house.” I pause. He is listening now. “If she is the woman that they say—a woman who would murder her husband in cold blood and then marry the man who did the deed for her own power and safety—then there is no reason to think that she would not turn against us, if it was in her interest to do so. I don’t want my cellars packed with gunpowder one dark night.”
He looks aghast. “She is a guest of the Queen of England; she will be restored to her own throne. How can you think that she would attack us?”
“Because if she is as bad as everyone says, then she is a woman who will stop at nothing to gain her way.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that Lord Darnley, her own husband, was in a plot against her. He had joined with the rebel lords and was guided by her half brother, Lord Moray. I think together they planned to throw her down and imprison her and put him as king consort on the throne. Her half brother would have ruled through Darnley. He was a weak creature, they all knew that.”
I nod. I knew Darnley from a boy, a boy horridly spoiled by his mother, in my opinion.
“The lords loyal to the queen made a plot to kill Darnley, Bothwell probably among them.”
“But did she know?” I demand. It is the key question: is she a husbandkiller?
He sighs. “I think not,” he says fairly. “The letters that show her ordering the deed are certainly forgeries; the others are uncertain. But she was in and out of the house while they were putting the gunpowder in the cellar; surely she would not have taken the risk if she had known of the danger. She had planned to sleep there that night.”
“So why marry Bothwell?” I demand. “If he was one of the plotters? Why reward him?”
“He kidnapped her,” my loyal husband says quietly, almost in a whisper. He is so ashamed by the shame of the queen. “That seems certain. She was seen to be taken by him without her consent. And when they came back to Edinburgh he led her horse by the bridle so that everyone could see she was his captive and innocent of a conspiracy with him.”
“Then why marry him?” I persist. “Why did she not arrest him as soon as she was safe in her castle and throw him on the scaffold?”
He turns away; he is a modest man. I can see his ears going red from a blush. He cannot meet my eyes. “He did not just kidnap her,” he says, his voice very quiet. “We think he raped her and she was with child by him. She must have known herself to be utterly ruined as a woman and a queen. The only thing she could do was to marry him and pretend that it was by consent. That way at least she kept her authority though she was ruined.”
I give a little gasp of horror. A queen’s person is sacred; a man has to be invited to kiss her hand. A physician is not allowed to examine her, whatever her need. To abuse a queen is like spitting on a holy icon; no man of conscience would dare to do it. And for the queen to be held and forced would be like having the shell of her sanctity and power broken into pieces.
For the first time, I feel pity for this queen. I have thought of her so long as a monster of heresy and vanity that I have never thought of her, little more than a girl, trying to rule a kingdom of wolves, forced in the end to marry the worst of them. “Dear God, you would never know to look at her. How does she bear it? It is a wonder that her spirit is not broken.”
“So you see, she will be no danger to us,” he says. “She was a victim of their plotting, not one of the plotters. She is a young woman in much need of friends and a place of safety.”
There is a tap at the door to tell me that my private household is assembled in our outer chamber, ready for prayers. My chaplain is already among them. I have household prayers said every night and morning. George and I go through to join them, my head still spinning, and we kneel on the cushions that I have embroidered myself. Mine